The Big Book of Freaks

From 1996, DC Comics published a single, oversized issue of The Big Book of Freaks, a one-shot curated by the singularly macabre and witty Gahan Wilson, who both wrote and illustrated the entire volume. Serving as a comprehensive, encyclopedia-style tour through history’s most peculiar human oddities—from circus sideshow performers to legendary figures of myth and medicine—the book blends Wilson’s signature, darkly humorous cartooning with factual, respectful storytelling. It stands as a unique artifact of the 1990s, a lovingly strange and scholarly tribute to those who lived outside society’s norms, all filtered through the unmistakable lens of a master of the weird.